The F Word launches

Granta 115: The F Word launches in the UK next week. Each issue of the magazine is the result of countless hours of exploration and reflection. While we put ‘The F Word’ together, we found ourselves asking what at times seemed like unanswerable questions. What is feminism? How are women living today? How do they negotiate their social and political power in different parts of the world? We didn’t find conclusive answers; what we did find were stories. We’re more than thrilled with the ones we’ve collected for The F Word, but we know that the crucial part of the process starts now – when the magazine lands in the hands of readers.

The exciting thing about sending this particular issue out into the world is that we have no idea what sort of response to expect. Close your eyes and picture a feminist. What do you see? We might not all see the same thing, but almost everyone sees something.

The point is, the F word is as loaded a word as they come. We hope this issue of the magazine – and the conversation we have with our readers – will load it more. We want to make that picture in our minds less definitive. We want to complicate things. We want you to complicate things. We want you to tell us what we missed.

Our series of launch events – beginning in London on Monday and in New York the following week – is our way of starting this conversation. Throughout the week, we’ll be looking at the F word through as many different angles as we can. Monday’s discussion at Asia House will take a global perspective: what does feminism look like in Moni Mohsin’s Pakistan, Wendy Law-Yone’s Burma, or Taiye Selasi’s Ghana? On Tuesday at the Liars’ League, actors will read pieces from the issue – among others, a letter by Eudora Welty and a story by Lydia Davis – and will show us if the F word can be entertaining … or even funny. Wednesday marks our official launch at Foyles, where two of our contributors, Taiye Selasi and Rachel Cusk, will shed light on their searingly powerful pieces from the issue in a conversation with our publisher, Sigrid Rausing. Rachel Cusk will make another appearance at Damian Barr’s (already sold out) Shoreditch House Literary Salon on Thursday. Finally, on Friday, we will examine the often fraught relationship between feminism and motherhood with a discussion and an exhibition viewing at the Foundling Museum.

Along with our events, we will also carry on the conversation started here, online. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be publishing additional stories, essays, poems and interviews around ‘The F Word’. And next week, we’ll be premiering a special multimedia project, for which three brilliant female artists have created animated responses to stories in the issue.

Please join us. Tell us what you think the F Word means.

‘Then by flame-light I see: I am burning/ his old easel’: read a new poem by National Book Critics Circle Award-winner Sharon Olds.

Also online: ‘Mona’s Story’, in which Urvashi Butalia shows us the world of the hijras, communities of transsexuals in India; and an interview with Urvashi Butalia.